Robin Roberts, 2011 Topps Heritage Baseball Flashbacks Relic #BSR-RR

Isn't this a right pretty card? It was a rare non-vintage purchase from yesterday's card show. At five bucks, I might have ignored it, but for the possibility that this wooden relic actually came from Memorial Stadium. I choose to believe that it did, and that makes Robin Roberts and the postage-stamp-sized-slab-o-wood a welcome addition to my collection. Wait, was I supposed to be talking about something else?

Yes, so, the Polar Bear Plunge. Saturday was a beautiful day, with temperatures near 60 and clear, sunny skies. The Missus and I parked at the Navy Marine Corps Stadium in Annapolis and took a shuttle bus to Sandy Point State Park. We had enough time to register and do a quick once-around of the various sponsor booths and food and merchandise stands before the 1:00 PM plunge. As we reached the shore and I stripped down to my plunging gear - a "Wild Bill" Hagy Orioles promotional tee, swimming trunks, and an old pair of Airwalks that I didn't mind immersing in the icy waters of the bay, I noticed that the air coming off of the bay was a bit cooler than the 60-degree temps I'd felt elsewhere that day.

Before I knew it, the first wave of plungers was already entering - and emerging from - the water. Janet and I tentatively made our way up the sand from our initial position in the back of the crowd, and she asked if I was ready. In response, I started awkwardly chugging toward the Bay, so my wife had to remind me that we weren't supposed to run. Safety first when you're dunking yourself in a large, frigid body of water, after all.

And frigid it was. I waded in about thigh-deep, hesitated for a moment, and then squatted down to soak the rest of my body up to my chin. I popped back up as soon as I could, most of my body feeling shocked and invigorated from the icy bath, but my sneaker-covered feet were practically aching from the cold. Janet had followed me in, and asked if I was ready to go completely under and then head for the safety and warmth of our gender-specific changing tents. I was completely unprepared to dunk my head under, as we hadn't discussed anything of the sort ahead of time. I told her so, my voice raising several octaves, and she acquiesced. Maybe next year...we are planning to partake in this madness again.

By the time I'd changed into my dry clothes, I felt completely fine and still a bit exhilarated. We joined up with a friend of a friend and his wife who had also just plunged, availed ourselves of the free Wawa coffee and complimentary hot dog lunch, and then shuttled back to our car. The story ends there, so I'd like to offer one final note of thanks to the handful of kind and generous readers who made donations in my name, thereby helping out the Special Olympics. You folks are awesome.

Vintage Fridays: Robin Roberts, 1965 Topps #15

I'm hopping into the Kevmobile tomorrow afternoon and driving up to Philadelphia for an overnight visit with my friends Ryan and Kerri. After all, I've only been out of Maryland twice in the last week - I wouldn't want to get in a rut or anything. In actuality, this will be my first experience at Citizen's Bank Park. I'm looking forward to watching Cliff Lee and the Phillies take on the fiesty Pirates on a hot Saturday night. I don't have a Robin Roberts half-and-half Orioles/Phillies jersey or anything, so I will probably just wear my maroon Washington College t-shirt and my Angry Oriole Bird cap. I've got to represent, you know.

Vintage Fridays: Robin Roberts, 1963 Topps #125

I really wish that I didn't have to spend so much time on this blog providing obituaries for the men who made baseball in Baltimore what it is today. I suppose it goes with the territory when your favorite team is in its 57th year of existence, and when the glory days of that club are several decades in the past. Still, it's been an uncommonly rough year for ex-Orioles. By my count, six have passed away in the first four months and change of 2010. That's not even counting former radio man Ernie Harwell and longtime traveling secretary Phil Itzoe. The world is moving on.

I don't have much to say about Robin Roberts, who died yesterday after a remarkable 83 years on this Earth. Within the past year or two I contemplated mailing him one of the few cards I own that shows him in his O's uniform, but I heard that he charged a few bucks for his autograph and put it on the back burner. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Ultimately, there's nothing I can say about the Hall of Famer that would compare to the excellent and heartfelt eulogy that Joe Posnanski delivered in his blog yesterday. Please give it a read.

Vintage Fridays: Robin Roberts, 1964 Topps #285

I've talked about some of my quirks as a collector. I take special notice of "cameo players" who appear on another player's card, I don't mind (and often enjoy) vintage cards that are in poor shape, and every couple of years I get bored and reorganize my cards: by team, by year and brand, or even alphabetically by player. But one of my biggest interests in the hobby is accruing cards of each player in all of the different uniforms he's worn (or as many as possible). It's an entertaining way to visually catalogue a player's career. In the case of Robin Roberts, so far I only have him with the Orioles and the Phillies but not the Astros. Still, I can say that I've got multiple cards of a Hall of Fame pitcher, and that's pretty good.

When I open a pack of cards, the major thing that holds my attention (besides scanning for Orioles or especially unique photos) is whether I've gotten any players on a new team. I finally picked up a few jumbo packs of 2009 Topps Series 2 last Sunday, and they were pretty productive on that front: Edgar Renteria in Giants colors, Trevor Hoffman as a Brewer, John Smoltz with the Red Sox. I have to do some significant compilation of want lists; non-Topps Orioles are a priority. But it might be a good side project to check my card inventory (I put together an Excel database with all 26,000 or so cards in my collection) and figure out which player-team combos I need to make things a little more complete in my own eyes. There's still a fairly big gap from 1996 through the middle of this decade, when I was largely out of the hobby. Heck, at some point I might be sufficiently bored to rearrange my cards by player name and thereby to refill my binders with my various player movement tableaus.

Now that I reread that last sentence...I sure hope I'm never that bored.